Giacomo Balla. The New Exhibition at Mart Featuring Works from the Biagiotti Cigna Collections

Mart presents for the first time in Italy one of the world’s most important private monographic collections: the complete body of works by Giacomo Balla belonging to the Biagiotti Cigna Collections. Through paintings, drawings, furnishings, objects and garments, 240 works are displayed alongside selected canvases and archival materials from the Rovereto museum. The exhibition also features the vibrant Genio Futurista, the largest artwork ever created by Balla.

Exactly 40 years ago, in 1986, fashion designer and entrepreneur Laura Biagiotti visited an exhibition at Rome’s Galleria Chimera featuring works by Giacomo Balla and his daughters Elica and Luce. From that moment until her passing in 2017, Laura Biagiotti passionately and continuously collected and promoted Giacomo Balla’s works, becoming, together with her husband Gianni Cigna, his foremost private collector. The works acquired during the first decade of collecting, up until 1996, the year of her husband’s death, now belong to the Biagiotti Cigna Foundation, which preserves the integrity and memory of an enlightened collecting vision and generous patronage.

These memories and personal connections have continued to be nurtured and promoted through further exhibitions and acquisitions of Giacomo Balla’s works as part of the Laura Biagiotti Collection.

This philanthropic and patronage activity continues today thanks to the commitment of their daughter, Lavinia Biagiotti Cigna, now leading the family company.

With this project, Mart and Biagiotti celebrate a utopia transformed into form — a journey rediscovering the visionary and contagious force that marked the dawn of Italian modernity.

The Biagiotti family’s Giacomo Balla collection is overseen by the Foundation’s artistic director, Professor Fabio Benzi, who, together with Beatrice Avanzi, Head of Exhibitions at Mart Rovereto, curates the major exhibition Giacomo Balla. The Style of the Avant-Garde, on view from 16 May to 18 October.

Presented in its entirety for the first time in Italy, the exhibition of the “Balla/Biagiotti” collection in Rovereto is far from accidental. The project perfectly reflects Mart’s vocation, reinforcing a narrative continuity that identifies the Trentino museum as a key institution for the promotion and study of the Futurist avant-garde.

The works from the Laura Biagiotti Collection and the Biagiotti Cigna Foundation engage in dialogue with a museum heritage long dedicated to exploring the events of 20th-century Italian art, with particular attention to Futurism and the work of Fortunato Depero, whose legacy gave birth to the museum itself.

Furthermore, this collaboration highlights Mart’s ongoing commitment to fostering dialogue between private and public collecting, with the aim of enhancing significant cultural heritages.